


Earth, Sky, Or Ground

by losingmymindtonight



Series: I Never Lived 'Til I Lived In Your Light [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brain Damage, Coma, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt Tony Stark, Injury Recovery, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark Coparenting Peter Parker, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Recovery, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 07:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19145989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losingmymindtonight/pseuds/losingmymindtonight
Summary: He could put Peter back together again.Thathe could do, because he’d been constructed for it. Reaching out, scooping up his children when they fell, putting band-aids on skinned knees and kissing the pain away.--(A possible ending to 5 Times Morgan Woke Peter Up And The 1 Time She Couldn't. This is the happy ending. If you'd like to read the sad ending, it's called To Help You Greet The End.)





	Earth, Sky, Or Ground

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ THIS AUTHOR'S NOTE BEFORE YOU PROCEED.  
> There are two possible endings to 5 Times Morgan Woke Peter Up And The 1 Time She Couldn't. This is the happy ending, in which Peter lives and everyone, eventually, gets to live happily ever after.  
> Please be mindful that while this is the happy ending, I'm still trying to be faithful to the genuine experiences of people who recover from comas and brain injuries. While I have Peter's healing factor to give him a miraculous recovery, and I can still be honest about the recovery along the way. Also, Tony begins this chapter believing that Peter is going to die, so remember that as you read.  
> This is the happy ending, though, so everything is going to be okay in the end.
> 
> WARNINGS: discussions of death, grief, hospitals, Morgan gets hurt (very minor) and cries at one point

There was a throat-constricting tension that came with watching your child’s final hours on Earth.

Technically speaking, they had another whole day before Cho planned to remove the ventilator, but Tony still felt like he was waiting for an axe to drop. The clock had become a checkpoint for his restlessness and his most hated enemy. It was a reminder of the shifting of time, of the shifting of Peter from this world to somewhere else.

On any other day, Morgan’s vibrancy would’ve made some of the pain lift from his chest. Now, it was just a permanent reminder of the life Peter was losing. The futures he wouldn’t explore. God, the life this child would’ve had. Tony could see it, in his head. It would’ve been amazing; it would’ve been bursting at the seams.

At the very least, it would’ve been so, so full of love.

He’d slunk into the corner of the room for a break, leaving Morgan curled up in the chair at Peter’s bedside. As much as he loathed to waste any second that he could spend with the kid, this entire process was exhausting. It was living in a state of constant grief, constant suspension. Even sleep had become unrestful, more nightmare than oblivion. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it without splintering.

So, at least for the next hour or so, he could pour himself into SI business. Signing contracts Pepper had forwarded to him, reviewing proposals for funding. A couple of them were pretty good, and he wasn’t quite able to squash the thought of _I should show these to Peter, he’d be really fascinated by their approach to integrating pre-existing formulas on plant movement into their proposal_ before it could send pangs of anguish down his spine.

Peter was everywhere. Hell, he was every _thing_. That was the point of your child: they eclipsed anything you were before them, and anything else that you might’ve planned to be after. He was always thinking about Peter and Morgan. _Always_. Worrying about them, wondering what they were doing, how they were feeling. It was an unconscious process, but one that brought only grief now.

Morgan’s voice broke into his self-induced detachment, tearing him back to the present with a flinch.

“Daddy! Daddy!” He pushed his StarkPad aside, slowly dragging himself to his feet with an aborted groan. God, his back hurt. These MedBay chairs weren’t meant for week-on-week vigils. “Petey’s moving!”

There was a brief flash of false hope, but then Tony let it be battered down by the harsh flush of reality.

“No, baby.” He could see May flinch out of the corner of his eye. She was sitting not too far from him, both of them having retreated from the immediacy of the moment. “Remember what we said? Petey… Petey can’t move, anymore. His body and brain are too sick to do that.”

She glared, defiance and fire. There wasn’t an inch of her that was built for submission. God, did Tony love her. “But he _did_. He moved. I saw it.”

Pepper flowed swiftly from the doorway to Morgan’s side. Tony made a mental note to thank her, once this was all over and his thoughts were less water, more molding clay. Somewhere along the lines, she seemed to have cemented herself as the sole pillar giving their tower of cards any kind of structural integrity. No matter how much grief she was feeling, she had chosen to view this as Tony and May’s tragedy. She looked after Morgan, cajoled them all into eating, sleeping, drinking. Without her, Tony wasn’t sure how any of them would survive tomorrow.

_Tomorrow_. What a looming word. This time tomorrow, Peter Parker could be dead. This time next week, he definitely would be.

This time next month, Tony Stark would be living in the same world that had killed his child.

“I know you think he moved, sweetheart,” Pepper stroked a hand over the top of Morgan’s head, “but I promise that he didn’t. Sometimes, when we want something to happen really, really badly, we can imagine it so much that it seems like it did. It’s… It’s okay to want him to move, honey. That’s just your brain trying to grieve.”

Grief was a dark thing, Tony decided. It didn’t spare anyone. Not him, not May, not Pepper, not Morgan. God, not even _Morgan_ , not even a child.

_Are you grieving for us too, Peter? If you’re out there somewhere, watching, looking down, whatever, are you already missing us like we’re missing you?_

“But he _moved_!”

“Shh, shh.” Pepper scooped Morgan up and started walking to the door. “Let’s take a break, okay? We’ll come back after a snack. Petey’ll still be here.”

_For now_ , he thought grimly, hating himself a little for thinking it but feeling the truth like a wasp’s sting.

“This is hard for her,” May murmured once the door shut, dropping her head into her hands. “She doesn’t understand.”

“She’s just too young,” he agreed, sinking tiredly into the chair at Peter’s bedside, the one Morgan had just been in. “Children aren’t developmentally prepared to comprehend the permanence of death until they’re between four and seven years old. A part of her just thinks it’ll all reverse.”

There was a grim amusement in May’s voice. “Where’d you read that?’

“I didn’t read it.” Without really thinking about it, he started running a thumb over the back of Peter’s hand. “Pepper and I had a crisis meeting with Morgan’s therapist when we… when we decided to let him go.” Even as they lurked closer and closer to the event horizon, the words still hurt. “She said it.”

May stood, then settled into the chair at his side. “It’s good that she’ll… that she’ll have that. Therapy, I mean. And you two. She’ll… She’ll have people on her side. That’ll be important. It was for Peter, at least.”

Tony forgot, sometimes, that Peter’s entire life had been a patchwork quilt of tragedy.

“You’ll have us, too,” he blurted. “We aren’t… I want to look after you. Or,” he winced, knowing exactly how that sounded and instantly regretting it, “not that you can’t take care of yourself, of course, but-”

“Tony,” May whispered, an adoration usually reserved for Peter on her face, “thank you.”

“You’re family.” It was the only way he could think to respond to that: to give her an assertion, negate the thanks because she didn’t need to be grateful, he was only doing what the circle of life demanded. Tony had promised himself long ago that he would always look after his family. “I want you to be there for Morgan, if you’re willing. There isn’t anybody on Earth who knew Peter like you do, and I… I don’t want her to forget him. I still want him to be a presence in her life.”

“You know,” there was something contemplative about May’s expression, like she was voicing a thought that she’d been building up for a long, long time, “when you first came knocking on my door, I didn’t want to let you in.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Now there was humor in her eyes, the kind that glinted through the storm-skies of grief like sunshine-slivers. “Do you know how hard it is to have your kid idolize someone like you? He used to sit on the floor, face pressed right up against the TV, watching your press conferences with stars in his eye, and all I could think was, god, how am I going to explain war profiteering to this child? How can I tout that violence is wrong when it’s all his idol seems to spread?”

“I can’t imagine,” he said, and he meant it. He’d never considered a world where children looked up to him, not really. He wasn’t that kind of person, wasn’t built for PG ratings.

“You’re good for him, though,” May murmured, oblivious to the spiral of self-doubt in his head. “I’m ashamed that I didn’t see it sooner, that all I saw was what the media wanted me to see, but I _do_ see it now. And I’ve said it before, but I mean it: I’m glad you were with him. I’m glad that he had someone there who loved him, at the end.”

He swallowed, throat strained. “Don’t… Don’t talk like that, like it’s not my fault, like I wasn’t the one who recruited him into this shit in the first place. Hell, at the end of that day, _I’m_ the reason that he’s lying there.”

“No, you’re not,” she shot back, shaking her head in a frightening mirror of Pepper when she was aggravated with him. “This is the price we pay, to love heroes. My husband was a police officer, Tony, the concept of sacrifice isn’t foreign to me, and it never has been. I think that a part of me knew that this might be where we ended up from the moment I first saw him standing there in that suit, but I also knew that nothing I said was going to stop him. This is… This is nobody’s fault. Not yours, not mine, not even his.”

As usual, he was floored by her composure, her ability to rationalize entropy. He’d never had a knack with that, even after a lifetime of practice. His parents’ deaths still felt like a discombobulation of tragedy in his head, a purposeless breaking. He didn’t know how to bring diamonds out of dirt. Pressure had never crystalized him, only left microfractures in his foundations.

“Sometimes,” he said, eyes fixed on Peter’s face, on the ventilator taped down by his mouth, “I can’t remember what he looked like, before. I try and try and try and I just… I can’t see his face.”

“Yeah, me too.” Her hand slipped over his, stilling the obsessive patterns he was scrawling over Peter’s palm and squeezing lightly. “You know what I do when I start feeling like that?”

“What?”

“I leave,” she said, and it sounded exactly like the love-fueled chastisement he’d been expecting, “I clear my head, I ask F.R.I.D.A.Y. to play me videos of him. I give myself time to process, outside of… of all this,” she waved her hands around her head, at the white walls and white floors and beeping medical equipment signaling their child’s glacier-paced end, “because if you don’t step back, you get trapped in it.”

He didn’t know how to put voice to the sensation that reared up inside him at the words. How could he explain that there was a part of him that desperately _needed_ to be trapped? If he was trapped, he was contained. If he was trapped, Peter was still here to hold ransom over his freedom.

“I’m not ready,” he finally whispered, and it was close, it was the nearest thing to honesty that he could offer her in that moment.

“We’ll never be ready,” she whispered back, and Tony was filled with the knowledge that May knew every one of his thoughts in ways that even he had yet to grasp, that she was feeling the very same things. “We could wait decades, and there will never be a moment when it feels right to let him go.” She pressed her shoulder into his, eyes locked on where Peter’s chest rose and fell with the pressure of the ventilator. Mechanical gasp in, mechanical gasp out, repeat and repeat and repeat. “But it’s time. We may not be ready, but… I think that he is.”

“And Peter gets what Peter wants,” he choked out.

Her hand pressed firmly into his, into Peter’s. “Always.”

\--

Pepper brought Morgan back a few hours later, refreshed from a meal and a nap, which were two things that Tony could barely remember having himself since this whole nightmare started. She curled up on Tony’s lap and immediately took Peter’s hand out of his. He forced himself not to feel jealous. Jesus, had he really reached a point that he resented his own daughter? Peter was _dying_. These were Morgan’s last moments with her brother.

_And these are your last moments with your child_ , his mind whispered, _you’re entitled to your own sense of loss._

“Petey,” she whispered, voice surprisingly sincere, “Petey, Daddy’s here now. Daddy doesn’t think you can move, but I know you do. Show him.”

_Please stop,_ he internally begged, _please, Morgan, please. I can’t stand this. I can’t._

He carefully lifted her and set her down on the seat. He had to escape. He _had_ to. It was cowardly, yes, and he would hate himself for it, later, would hate himself for wasting time with his children when time had become such a priceless commodity, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t listen to Morgan’s hope.

“Daddy’s gonna go back to the couch and do some work now, okay?”

The betrayal on Morgan’s face would reflect back at him in nightmares for decades. “But-”

“Sorry, baby.” _I’m so sorry. I am so, so sorry._ “I’ll be back. I promise.”

The corner couch’s warm embrace was the kind of haven that tasted like surrender. It wasn’t a victorious peace, but a conquered one. But, then again, that’s all this was, really: a conquering. Reality conquering faith, grief conquered love, death conquering life.

Tony Stark had never done well with waving a white flag, even when it was the right thing to do. It was a bravery he’d never found.

He couldn’t have spent more than fifteen minutes on the couch, stuck within the orbit his carousel thoughts, before Morgan yelped and knocked every one of his morbid ruminations straight out of their trajectories.

“Petey! You’re hurting me!”

Tony leapt to his feet, all chest-deep longing to be alone evaporating at the shout, tossing his phone aside with enough force that would probably crack the screen, but he didn’t care. Had never cared about anything less, because that was _pain_ in Morgan’s voice. Genuine, bright, vivid _pain_ , and it was easily enough to have him rushing to the bed within a second, heart hammering.

“What’s wrong, baby?” His hands fumbled to cup her face, adrenaline making everything piercing, over-sharp. “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him with teary eyes. “Petey won’t let go. It _hurts_ , Daddy.”

His eyes darted down to where Morgan had Peter’s hand gripped in hers, and froze.

Peter’s fingers weren’t limp, like he’d expected them to be, like they had been for weeks. Instead, they were clenched tightly around Morgan’s hand, grip brutal enough to bruise.

“Peter,” he gasped. He looked up to the kid’s face, but his eyes were closed, face slack. No recognition, not even a ghost of genuine understanding. “Peter, let go of your sister.”

When nothing happened, he physically pried Peter’s hand away. Morgan jumped out of the chair as soon as she was free, chest stuttering as she let out a series of breathless wails.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., get Pepper.” The words left him without thought for guidance. He felt like he was in a haze, every ounce of his consciousness becoming tunnel-vision for the child in front of him, the child that was _moving_ , the child that was supposed to be, for all intents and purposes, _dead_. “Fuck, get May, too. And Cho. Get… Get me _everyone_.”

“On it, Boss.”

Peter’s hand went limp, going just as still and seemingly lifeless as it had been for weeks. The flicker went away so suddenly that Tony wondered if it had ever really happened at all.

Only a second later, Helen came rushing into the room, flanked by two nurses, Pepper, and May. Pepper saw Morgan wailing and went straight to her side, eyes darting up to Tony in a silent inquiry. He wanted to answer, he really did, but his vocal cords seemed to be trapped by the overwhelming realization that Peter had _moved_.

“What is it, Tony?” Helen asked, her nurses falling in around him to check vitals, adjust IVs and monitoring pads. “Tony, what’s wrong?”

“He… He _moved_.”

May materialized at his side, grasping for Peter’s face, hands dancing around the ventilator with muscle-memory precision. “He _what_?”

Tony shook his head. He felt shell-shocked, like he was drunk-stumbling out from the adrenaline crash of his life. “Morgan, uh, she… she said he moved earlier, and none of us believed her, but I just… I just _saw him_ move.”

“Tony, look at me.” He blinked dazedly at Helen, emotions sloshing in like ice-clogged waves. “What do you mean by _moved_? What _exactly_ did he do?”

“He, um,” he’d never had his mind churn so inefficiency, had never experienced this level of intellectual disconnect, and if he wasn’t so centered around Peter, it might’ve frightened him, “he… he was squeezing her hand.”

“Was it in response to a command?”

“No, no. He was just… doing it,” he finished lamely.

“He wouldn’t stop!” Morgan cried, curling herself up against Pepper’s chest. “Daddy told him to stop and he didn’t. He’s bad at listening.”

“He might not be able to listen, honey,” Helen offered, face pinched in thought. “We’ll… We’ll go head and run some tests,” she finally said, sounding a hell of a lot more grave than Tony expected, considering that Peter had _moved_. He had _moved_. “But I… I really don’t want to get your hopes up…”

“What are you talking about?” He glanced around the room, trying to grab the same level enthusiasm from anyone, but Pepper and May just averted their eyes and Morgan was too busy crying to form an alliance. “He _moved_ , Helen.”

“I understand that, Tony,” he was more than a little offended by how exasperated she sounded, “but it’s not uncommon for these sorts of… of _muscle spasms_ to occur at this point. Setting aside all the biological aspects of the end of life, it’s very likely that it was just a cramp caused by dehydration.”

“Dehydration?” May’s brow furrowed, and she brushed her fingers along Peter’s cheek, concerned and soft. “Is he not getting enough fluids?”

Helen winced, eyes flickering to the floor. “We’ve stopped his fluids.”

“You’ve _what_?” Tony understood that his protectiveness was being unfairly triggered, but he couldn’t stop it from rushing up despite logic. “What the hell is he getting in his IV, then?”

“It’s a mixture of morphine and scopolamine. The morphine is… probably useless, honestly, but I did it for myself more than any kind of medical practice.” For the first time, Tony realized that Helen _knew_ Peter. She’d known Peter for _years_ , had stitched up bullet holes and knife wounds after wayward patrols. There was grief lurking behind her professional exterior. Genuine, personal, shattering grief. “It’s for pain control, just in case there’s piece of him that could still...” She shook her head, posture deflating. “Just in case.”

“I’ve used scopolamine before,” May murmured. “It’s to… control mucus, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So what does that mean?” Tony asked, irritation rising. He hated being out of the loop on a good day and this was, certifiably, the absolute _worst_ day. “Why were you giving it to him?”

“It helps control the,” Helen threw a regretful glance at Morgan before continuing, “well, the _death rattle_ , for lack of a better euphemism, which comes from mucus building up in the patient’s throat and lungs. That was another reason for purposefully dehydrating him. It just makes everything a little easier, once we remove his life support.”

He knew that she didn’t mean _easier for Peter_ , she meant easier for _them_. For _him_. That’s all that any of this really was: making the end come sooner, come _quieter_. Peter was past caring about the details.

Death wasn’t a tragedy for the person who goes, not at the close of the thing. Helen was maneuvering Peter into it, and pulling Tony along as they went.

But… But now Peter had _moved_ , and suddenly all that he could taste was a chance.

“Well, stop it. Stop _all of it_.” He turned to May, catching her eyes, finding the same foolhardy hope within her that he was stockpiling up in himself. “Put him back on fluids. Do whatever it is you were doing before. He _moved_ , Helen. No matter what you say, he _moved_.”

Movement was life, right? Static things faded and died, but things in motion _stayed_ in motion. It was just simple physics.

“I’ll get him back on fluids,” Helen conceded, and relief washed through him with so much force that he swayed, lightheaded, “and I’ll take him back for another EEG now. We can remake some decisions once we know more.”

The next few minutes were a blur of noise and touch and forward momentum. A nurse guided him and May away from Peter’s side, murmuring promises to take good care of him while he was away, and then the bed was moving, and Peter was leaving, and Tony was struggling to form any kind of thought process that didn’t verge uncomfortably on a prayer.

_Come on, Peter,_ he thought, watching the nurses maneuver the kid’s hospital bed through the doorframe and into the sterile hallway beyond, _if you give me this miracle, I’ll spend the rest of my life doing anything you want._

_Anything._

 --

Rhodey and Happy both arrived sometime after Helen took Peter. Tony assumed that Pepper must’ve called them, because both he and May had just collapsed onto the couch and lapsed into a stunned silence.

Happy gently took Morgan… somewhere. Tony didn’t know where, didn’t really care, either, although he supposed probably made him a terrible father, but then again it was _Happy_. It was probably best that she was removed from the situation right now, removed from Tony, and there was no one on Earth that Tony trusted like Happy Hogan.

Rhodey sat on his left, wedged between his hip and the couch’s arm, brow furrowed with concern, glancing between him and Pepper and May and the empty space where Peter’s hospital bed ought to be.

“You alright?”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He supposed that he should probably be _more_ alright than he’d been for weeks, because now he had a manifestation of hope, a physical sign into which he could pour his faith, but it didn’t feel like relief. It felt like a worse kind of suspension. Before, there had been certainty, even if that certainty was the kind that made vomit sting in his throat, the certainty that Peter was going to die, and that he was going to have to watch.

Now, though, that one solid fact had been sent spinning out from underneath him.

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

They sat in silence, and Tony had never been more grateful for Rhodey’s effortless ability to read him. He knew that speaking was superfluous to the coming ordeal. For now, all they could do was exist through the minutes.

May reached for his hand when Helen finally came back and stood in front of them, a look of strained wonder on her face.

“Where’s Peter?” He rasped, his voice gravel and dust. “Where… is he…?”

“He’s alright,” Helen assured, pulling up one of the bedside chairs and sitting across from them. “I just have my nurses finishing up with a few tests, then they’ll bring him back in.”

May squeezed his fingers. “And?”

“I don’t… I don’t know how to say this.”

“Just say it,” May whispered, desperation in every syllable.

Helen inclined her head, conceding. “To be frank with you, the results don’t make any sense, but they aren’t bad. Quite the opposite, actually. They’re… miraculous.”

Of all of them, it seemed as though Rhodey had retained at least some presence of mind. He leaned forward, leaving his arm twisted awkwardly behind him so he could continue gripping Tony’s shoulder. “What do you mean?”

Helen bit her lip. “Before I explain fully I… I feel as though I have to admit something.”

May leapt on the words like a bloodhound, head tilted and words sharp. “Admit what?”

“I last checked Peter’s brain activity two weeks ago, and compared those results to the scans we performed in the immediate aftermath of the injury.”

This time, Tony responded, nodding along with the familiar narrative. “And you found the same level of brain activity as before. There were no changes.”

“Well, no.” Everyone in the room seemed to still at the admission, staring in various states of shock. “That’s… That’s not actually true.”

“What?” Pepper breathed, reminding Tony of her presence. “What do you mean?”

Helen shifted uncomfortably in her seat, looking about as relaxed as someone facing down a firing squad. “There was… some improvement in the rates of electrical activity we recorded in Peter’s brainstem.” At everyone’s incredulous looks, Helen rushed to elaborate. “But just slightly enough that I assumed it was an abnormality.”

_Electrical activity. Brainstem. Peter._

Peter, who moved. Peter, who was supposed to be gone. Peter, who Tony was ready to _give up on._

“But still,” he gasped, working his jaw slowly, trying to capture understanding for something that was just impossible to understand, “why… why didn’t you tell us that?”

“Because I didn’t want to get your hopes up.” Helen ran a hand down her face, exhaustion plain in the curve of her shoulders, the inflection of her voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

“You’ve been amazing, Helen,” May interrupted, tone soft, “and this has been hard for all of us, including you. You were just trying to do what was right. I won’t fault you for that.”

Pepper nodded along. “I think we can all agree that Helen’s not at fault here. All I wanna know is this: what does any of this mean for Peter? A few weeks ago, you said he was verging on brain death, and now he’s _moving_? Is that even possible?”

“Speaking from a textbook? No.” Helen’s face was the picture of bewilderment. “I can only assume that his healing factor kicked in, and the mild improvements we observed two weeks ago were actually the start of his brain repairing itself. The new EEG shows another leap in electrical activity, one that just shouldn’t be possible at this stage, but it’s there. I ran the scans twice. Attributing it to his healing factor is the only explanation that makes sense, unless you’re one to believe in a divine intervention of some kind. Obviously, I’m trying to think up some tests so I can give you more concrete answers, because right now, I’m shooting in the dark when it comes to offering you any kind of prognosis.” She gave them all a helpless look. “There’s just no standard for this kind of recovery. We’ll be flying blind into every turn.”

But to Tony, none of that mattered, because he heard the implicit message in the caution.

_There’s just no standard for this kind of recovery._

_Recovery._

Recovery wasn’t something you thought of when you were staring down the end of a child’s life. No, it _was_ life. It was the journey _back_ to life, to normalcy, to a future.

Those words were the most beautiful thing Tony had ever heard, the third greatest gift he’d ever been given.

And, sure, there was no standard for the phenomenon that Peter had become, but there was no standard for building a metal suit out of nickel-titanium alloy and blasting it into the sky, and Tony had managed to do that, hadn’t he? He could put Peter back together again. _That_ he could do, because he’d been constructed for it. Reaching out, scooping up his children when they fell, putting band-aids on skinned knees and kissing the pain away.

May was smiling like sunshine. “But there _will_ be a recovery?”

“Yes,” Helen whispered, and the warmth of that single word filled the room so totally that Tony felt something dying inside him revive. “Yes. From all the data I can offer you, there’s every reason to assume that, at this point, there _will_ be a recovery.”

Peter’s first word had been _no_. How could Tony have ever assumed that that kid, that stubborn, wonderful, beautiful child, would leave them like this?

His children really _were_ miracles.


End file.
